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Luftwaffenhelfer
A ''Luftwaffenhelfer'', also commonly known as a ''Flakhelfer'', was any member of the auxiliary staff of the German ''Luftwaffe'' during World War II. Such terms often implied students conscripted as child soldiers. Establishment ''Luftwaffenhelfer'' (literally, "air force assistants") were established on January 22, 1943, following implementation of the decree ''Kriegshilfseinsatz der Jugend bei der Luftwaffe'' ("Youth War Assistance Service in the Air Force"). The order called for drafting whole school classes of male students born in 1926 and 1927 into a military corps, supervised by Hitler Youth and ''Luftwaffe'' personnel. The draft was later extended to include 1928 and 1929 births. Deployment included ideological indoctrination by the Hitler Youth, military duties and limited continuation of the normal school curriculum, often by the original teachers. While the official term was ''Luftwaffenhelfer (HJ)'', the term more commonly used is "''Flakhelfer''" (female: ''Fla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dieter Noll
Dieter Noll (31 December 1927 – 6 February 2008) was a German writer. His best known work is the two volume novel ''Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt'' from the early 1960s which had sold over two million copies by his death. The work was filmed in 1965. Life Dieter Noll was born in Riesa, Saxony to a pharmacist. His mother, who was half Jewish, suffered from repression after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted in Nazi Germany. Noll attended an Oberschule before being drafted as a Luftwaffenhelfer, or assistant in the Nazi air force. Noll served as a Luftwaffenhelfer in the Schweren Heimatflakbatterie 210 in Borna district of Chemnitz, though at the end of 1944 he became a soldier in the Wehrmacht. Towards the end of the war, he was captured as prisoner of war by the Americans. After his release, he took his Abitur, or school-leaving certificate, in Chemnitz. He began a study of art history, philosophy and German at the University of Jena in 1948. After 1950 he lived in Berlin as a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manfred Rommel
Manfred Rommel (24 December 1928 – 7 November 2013) was a German politician belonging to the Christian Democratic Union (Germany), Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who served as mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 until 1996. Rommel's policies were described as tolerant and liberal, and he was one of the most popular municipal politicians in Germany. He was the recipient of numerous foreign honours. He was the only son of Wehrmacht field marshal Erwin Rommel and his wife Lucia Maria Mollin (1894–1971), and contributed to the establishment of museums in his father's honour. He was also known for his friendship with George Patton IV and David Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, David Montgomery, the sons of his father's two principal military adversaries. Background and family Rommel was born in Stuttgart and entered service as a Luftwaffenhelfer (air force assistant) in 1943 at age 14, serving in an anti-aircraft battery. He considered joining the Waffen SS, but his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Günter Winkler
Hans Günter Winkler (; 24 July 1926 – 9 July 2018) was a German show jumper. He is the only show jumper to have won five Olympic gold medals and a total of seven Olympic medals, and to compete and win medals in six different Olympic Games. In the 1950s and 1960s Winkler was one of Germany's most popular athletes. Career Winkler was born in Barmen, today part of Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the son of a riding teacher. His father, Paul Winkler, died as a soldier during the last week of World War II. The boy was drafted as a ''Flakhelfer'' and was a prisoner of war for a short time. The house of his mother in Frankfurt was destroyed by bombing. He made money, to support his mother and himself, as a groom in the stable of the Landgravine of Hesse in Kronberg im Taunus. He was also a riding teacher of the Americans who occupied the area. He began an apprenticeship in a textile store in Frankfurt in 1948. Winkler participated in show jumping competitions and won f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Günter Guillaume
Günter Guillaume (1 February 1927 – 10 April 1995) was a German spy who gathered intelligence as an agent for East Germany's secret service, the Stasi, in West Germany. Guillaume became West German chancellor Willy Brandt's secretary, and his discovery as a spy in 1973 led to Brandt's downfall in the Guillaume affair. Early life Günter Karl Heinz Guillaume was born on 1 February 1927, at 31 Choriner Straße in Prenzlauer Berg, then a working-class district of Berlin. He was the only child of Karl Ernst Guillaume, a pianist who played in bars and theatres, where he provided background music for silent films, and Johanna Old Pauline (), a hairdresser. His parents, who had married four months before Günter's birth, were both native to Berlin. Due to the combination of the Great Depression and the introduction of sound films, the Guillaumes suffered financial hardship. These experiences made the extremist policies being presented by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Party attractive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Udo Walendy
Udo Walendy (21 January 1927 – 17 November 2022) was a German author, soldier, and Holocaust denier. Like Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, he disputed Germany's guilt for the Second World War. Life Walendy was born in Berlin on 21 January 1927. . Towards the end of the war Walendy was drafted first into the ''Reichsarbeitsdienst'' (auxiliary force), then the ''Luftwaffenhelfer'' (child soldier in the air force) and finally into the regular ''Wehrmacht'' (the German military). He completed his ''Abitur'' (secondary education) in 1946 and then went to journalism school in Aachen. From 1950 to 1956 he studied political science at the Hochschule für Politik in West Berlin, where he received his diploma. Afterwards he worked as the director of a folk high school in Herford and as the business leader of an employers' association in Bielefeld. In 1965 he went independent and founded the ''Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung'' ("Publishing House for Folklore and Contemporary His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict has chosen to be known by the title "pope emeritus" upon his resignation. Ordained as a priest in 1951 in his native Bavaria, Ratzinger embarked on an academic career and established himself as a highly regarded theologian by the late 1950s. He was appointed a full professor in 1958 at the age of 31. After a long career as a professor of theology at several German universities, he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and created a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977, an unusual promotion for someone with little pastoral expe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Ratzinger
Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign of the Vatican City State from 19 April 2005 until his resignation on 28 February 2013. Benedict's election as pope occurred in the 2005 papal conclave that followed the death of Pope John Paul II. Benedict has chosen to be known by the title "pope emeritus" upon his resignation. Ordained as a priest in 1951 in his native Bavaria, Ratzinger embarked on an academic career and established himself as a highly regarded theologian by the late 1950s. He was appointed a full professor in 1958 at the age of 31. After a long career as a professor of theology at several German universities, he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and created a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977, an unusual promotion for someone with little pastoral expe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niklas Luhmann
Niklas Luhmann (; ; December 8, 1927 – November 6, 1998) was a German sociologist, philosopher of social science, and a prominent thinker in systems theory. Biography Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Free State of Prussia, where his father's family had been running a brewery for several generations. He entered the Gymnasium Johanneum at Luneburg in 1937. In 1943, he was conscripted as a Luftwaffenhelfer in World War II and served for two years until, at the age of 17, he was taken prisoner of war by American troops in 1945. After the war Luhmann studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1946 to 1949, when he obtained a law degree, and then began a career in Lüneburg's public administration. During a sabbatical in 1961, he went to Harvard, where he met and studied under Talcott Parsons, then the world's most influential social systems theorist. In later days, Luhmann dismissed Parsons' theory, developing a rival approach of his own. Leaving the civil service in 1962, he lec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans-Dietrich Genscher
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (21 March 1927 – 31 March 2016) was a German statesman and a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 1969 to 1974, and as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1974 to 1992 (except for a two-week break in 1982, after the FDP had left the Third Schmidt cabinet), making him the longest-serving occupant of either post and the only person to have held one of these positions under two different Chancellors of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1991 he was chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). A proponent of Realpolitik, Genscher has been called "a master of diplomacy". He is widely regarded as having been a principal "architect of German reunification". In 1991, he played a pivotal role in international diplomacy surrounding the breakup of Yugoslavia by successfully pushing for international recognition of Croatia, Sloveni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabteilung'' of the Imperial Navy, had been disbanded in May 1920 in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which banned Germany from having any air force. During the interwar period, German pilots were trained secretly in violation of the treaty at Lipetsk Air Base in the Soviet Union. With the rise of the Nazi Party and the repudiation of the Versailles Treaty, the ''Luftwaffe''s existence was publicly acknowledged on 26 February 1935, just over two weeks before open defiance of the Versailles Treaty through German rearmament and conscription would be announced on 16 March. The Condor Legion, a ''Luftwaffe'' detachment sent to aid Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, provided the force with a valuable testing grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Child Soldier
Children (defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as people under the age of 18) have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures. Children in the military, including state armed forces, non-state armed groups, and other military organizations, may be trained for combat, assigned to support roles such as porters or messengers, or used for tactical advantage as human shields or for political advantage in propaganda. Children are targeted for their susceptibility to influence, which renders them easier to recruit and control. While some are recruited by force, others choose to join up, often to escape poverty or because they expect military life to offer a rite of passage to maturity. Child soldiers who survive armed conflict frequently develop psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioral problems such as heightened aggression, which together lead to an increased risk of unemploy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Sedlmayr
Walter Sedlmayr (6 January 1926 – 14 July 1990) was a popular German stage, television, and film actor from Bavaria. His murder in 1990 was widely publicized. Career After his 1945 wartime ''Abitur,'' Sedlmayr served as a ''Flakhelfer'' towards the end of World War II. His acting career began with minor roles with the ''Münchner Kammerspiele,'' for which he played more than 25 years, and in numerous ''Heimatfilme'' during the 1940s and 1950s. In 1971, by now an associate of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Sedlmayr was briefly arrested because a stolen artwork, the ''Blutenburger Madonna'', was found in his house. He was later acquitted of all charges, and the media attention given to his trial helped him gain major roles. His breakthrough came with the leading role in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's film '' Theodor Hierneis oder Wie man ehem. Hofkoch wird'' (1972). Afterwards, Sedlmayr was cast in numerous popular German TV shows, including ', ''Der Herr Kottnik'', ''Der Millionenbauer' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
